


life after the earth-life

by pyotr



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, warnings & etc in chapter notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: a collection of one-shots.three:but vivi knew arthur,rememberedhim- movie nights and shared lunches and road trips, calls at three in the morning when he couldn’t sleep and she was up researching, frenetic. he was familiar, and he was good, and she liked him.
Relationships: Arthur & Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated), Arthur/Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated), Lewis & Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated), Lewis/Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	1. only found another orphan (lewis)

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my next mess of a one-shot collection! yeehaw. you can find me on tumblr @translewis, and send requests either there or here in a comment.
> 
> most stuff in this fandom is headcanon, and the only one really of any note here is the ofrenda reference. it's implied that the peppers could be hispanic, and i hc mrs pepper as afro-mexican. hence the ofrenda.
> 
> set sometime nebulously post-hellbent? and post-reconciliation.

possibly one of lewis’s biggest fears was facing his family again.

it had been hard enough to patch things with vivi and arthur: one friend who had only scraps of memory left of him, and the other who had pushed him to his death. but he’d done it. it was different now, more strained and the silences more stifling, but it was something, and that was always better than nothing.

but vivi and arthur had been one thing. they were ghost hunters, ones that had gotten themselves all entangled in demons and old spirits. but his family...

his family was normal. normal people leading normal lives, normal parents with normal jobs and normal sisters going to normal school. they didn’t know the same things his friends did, didn’t believe in them; his parents had always viewed his passion for ghosts and ghost hunting to be a harmless indulgence, something they humored him in, and that was _okay,_ really. but it meant that they wouldn’t understand.

(he had worried, too, that he’d forgotten how to be soft- how to love. he’d been so angry for so long that he thought he could have burned himself clean of everything else.

but he hadn’t. vivi and arthur were there to remind him of that.)

there were lots of things that lewis didn’t understand, that knew he would never understand, but there was one thing set, unquestionably, in stone: he had died.

he didn’t know what his parents thought of his disappearance. he knew they remembered him, at least, from arthur’s mutterings about sending them updates, but he didn’t know if they thought he was dead or just missing. he wondered what they would do if he walked through the door right that moment.

(he wondered if they had put his photo on the ofrenda, up next to his grandparents. wondered if he was remembered, then, in sweetbread and marigolds.)

he fidgets, pulling at his collar, shifting on his feet. keeping up the illusion of flesh and life was exhausting, in a way, but the nervous energy swallowed him regardless. he couldn’t stop thinking about how they might react, what would happen if he were to accidentally let the illusion slip for even a moment, skin sloughing away to reveal bone licked by leaping purple flames.

they would be horrified, no doubt.

“it’s alright, lewis,” says vivi, laying a soothing hand on his arm. she shoots him a sunny smile, curling her fingers into the sleeve of his purple sweater. “you’ll do just fine, i promise!”

he takes a deep breath, but before he can respond vivi is pressing down the doorbell with her free hand. there’s a shout from inside the house- one of the girls, probably belle- and a moment later his father opens the door, flour smudged across one cheek.

“mr. pepper, hi!” vivi chirps, but his eyes are on lewis, wide, and lewis can’t help but stare back. every word he’d ever learned crowded at the back of his throat, _i love you_ and _i missed you_ and _i’m sorry, so sorry_ all fighting to get out at once.

instead, he settles on a choked, “hi, dad.”

“oh,” his father breathes before reaching forward to pull him down into a hug. he feels alive, lewis thinks as he buries his face into his father’s shoulder even though it makes his back ache, listening to his heartbeat. he felt alive and he felt human. “oh, lewis, you're home.”


	2. like in a haunted house (arthur)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i do be posting at some godawful hours in the morning, huh
> 
> inspired by weirdtober's day 5 prompt (paranoia/conspiracy) and the thought of what if mystery yoinking arthur's arm didn't entierly get rid of the ???

arthur doesn’t know when exactly it happened, but he’s found that he hates his reflection.

not when he’s standing still and steady, staring himself in the eye - though that’s unnerving enough. it’s always when it’s just a glance, the briefest image caught from the corner of his eye: in his bathroom’s mirror, or in a window, leaving him with a flash of green and a sudden unease that stirred his stomach and tightened around his throat.

so, he goes out of his way to avoid mirrors, when he can help it. it sounded easier than it was.

still though, he could see himself losing weight, the way his face looked thinner, dark rings under his eyes. he hadn’t been sleeping well, not since he’d woken up in a hospital bed, empty space where his arm was meant to be. when he dreams, it’s of teeth and pain and green. he thinks that the discomfort had started then, too.

he can’t help it. without looking up from his laptop, arthur asks, “you think there’s anything different about me? anything wrong?”

vivi hums, stirring the last bit of sugar into a mug before she sets one down at his elbow: coffee for him, black tea for her. they are sitting in her cramped little kitchen in her cramped little apartment, knees almost brushing under the table. it felt good, comforting, almost like home, had there not been a big, gaping absence that only he seemed to feel. _were was lewis?_

“you look a bit peaky, maybe,” vivi says, squinting as she peers at him. it’s hard, but he meets her gaze with his own, and her probing expression softens. “why?”

“just, uh, just a thought,” arthur says. it’s too fast and he knows that she doesn’t buy it, knows that she knows that he knows; vivi has always been able to read him too well.

“you’ve been taking your pills, right?” he’d never been able to figure out if it was intentional or not but vivi wielded bluntness like a weapon, cutting down to the bone. he’d known it was coming, but he couldn’t help but wince anyway.

“yeah, i have.” and he had. the anxiety always gnawed at him but the medication had helped, especially in the past few months, dulling the fear and the twisting, twining breathlessness that came with it. he didn’t know where he’d be without it now, really. “promise.”

“if you say so.” there were things that vivi, too, knew not to push, but she still gave him a doubtful glance from over the rim of her mug. “you’re not fishing for compliments, are you? am i s’posed to ask if you’ve gotten a new haircut or something?”

arthur can’t help thinking that lewis was better at worrying. he missed him enough that it felt like an ache. _where was lewis?_

he huffs out a laugh. vivi had always been able to make him laugh. he lies, “yeah, i’ve been using a new gel. whaddya think?”

that night though, while brushing his teeth before bed, he sees it again: that glimpse of green, gone when he looks head-on. still, he stares at himself in the mirror, pushes down the anxiety that crawls up the back of his neck. he couldn’t put his finger on it, exactly, but looking at himself just made him feel something _not right._

he thinks again of the cave, and what he remembers of it. he’d known it was not right as they pulled up, his skin prickling, but he didn’t want vivi’s teasing or lewis’ half-empathetic, half-pitying looks he gave when arthur admitted to being nervous. vivi had said something as they walked into the cave mouth, her voice clattering against the cave walls and echoing back at them. when the path forked, he had taken mystery with her on the lower route and left he and lewis to go upwards. he remembers clutching at lewis’ shoulders as they explored.

he remembers a growing pain in his left palm that grew worse with each beat of his heart. he remembers a snap of teeth and an animal snarl. he remembers waking up in a hospital bed, delirious with the pain medication he’d been pumped full of.

so, his memory of the cave is vague. vivi’s was worse, somehow, gone completely, her memories of lewis scattered into fractals - the therapist said it was from trauma, she’d told him once. he wondered what it was, why it had affected them so differently.

arthur drops his toothbrush in the cup he keeps by the sink for that purpose and turns on the tap, bending to splash water on his face. as he straightens his eyes catch reflexively on the mirror, and the green stays longer this time, burning bright in his doppelganger’s eyes before fading and leaving arthur staring dumbstruck at himself, the expression reflected back at him perfectly.

he didn’t like it, the cave. it’s mystery is what had drawn their attention to it in the first place, but arthur had never liked things he couldn’t fit into a box, things unexplained by science. it had taken so much from him and left him with so little: his memories, his friend, in exchange for a few discomforting hallucinations.

_where was lewis?_

arthur was sure if he found him, he’d find answers, too.


	3. voiceless things — the dead, the past (vivi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SICK i've got character pieces on the main three
> 
> i'm 100% lewvithur, they're all bisexual and in love, but i can't help but think of arthur & vivi's relationship without lewis there, and especially how uncomfortable arthur must have been with vivi hitting on him, remembering lewis, and then feeling guilty that hey, he kinda wanted to kiss his missing best friend's girlfriend (who was also his best friend)
> 
> anyway hopefully soon i'll churn out something with vivi & The Boys soon

vivi had always thought of herself as normal, all extra curricular interests aside.

she had grown up in a boring, normal small town and working in a boring, normal bookstore. her parents were hardly the most interesting, a doctor and a columnist, and she worked at a bookstore herself- though it could hardly be called work, most days spent idly reorganizing books or flicking through her phone at the register, waiting for a customer.

perhaps that was why she was so drawn to the occult. witches, ghosts, magic and happenings that couldn’t quite be explained- they all felt so exciting, so different than the perfectly average life she lived otherwise. the breathlessness of stepping into a place and knowing that there was something else going on- something unnatural, something _new-_ made her feel alive.

maybe that was why they went to the cave. maybe it was her fault, in the end. 

she remembered talking about it with arthur beforehand, pouring over maps and research she’d scrounged up with a few well-worded google searches. it hurt though, left her with a headache, and there were familiar, aching absences dotted throughout her memory like pages torn out of a book.

arthur told her that the missing piece was lewis, their friend, who had disappeared the same night.

vivi didn’t know lewis, had met him only through the stories others had told her about him, but thinking back on them was similarly frustrating. he was good, she’d been told, kind and generous with a good heart, so full of love for his friends and family. for her. 

that was perhaps the strangest part, to know that she loved and was loved, but not to remember any part of it.

increasingly often she’ll remind herself, that somewhere out there is someone she’s meant to be waiting for, but it had been meaning less and less of late. especially when arthur was _right there._

she knew arthur.

arthur, nervy, skittish, _clever_ arthur, who could gut a machine in minutes and put it back together with his eyes closed, but choked at the thought of inconveniencing someone. even her dog made him nervous. but she knew him, _remembered_ him- movie nights and shared lunches and road trips, calls at three in the morning when he couldn’t sleep and she was up researching, frenetic. he was familiar, and he was good, and she liked him. _like_ liked him, even.

(”hey, arthur,” she had asked him one evening, flicking through articles on her phone while arthur was on his back beneath the van, tinkering with something on the chassis. “can i ask you a question?”

“yeah, shoot.” he was still working, paying only half-attention to her at best.

she hooked her foot around one of the wheels on his roller board and pulled him out from under the van, ignoring his startled yelp and indignant _hey!_ as she shoved her phone into his face. “how about this place next? i know you said you hate haunted houses the most, but...”

“haunted house?” he squints at the screen in front of him, knowing better than to reach out and hold with his grease-covered hands. arthur grimaces and wrinkles his nose in distaste but says, “i mean, alright. that could work.”

“are you _sure?_ ” vivi badgers. this lead seemed the most promising- an old mansion with mysterious lights in the windows, surrounded by big, stone fences and over grown briars? yes!- but it wouldn’t be hard to find somewhere else to investigate. it just wouldn’t be as _fun._

“you wanna go, right?” arthur says, and it’s not much of a question. he wipes his hands off on the rag he keeps nearby, but it doesn’t do much for the grease ground under his fingernails, in all the nooks and crannies of his prosthetic. “then we’ll go.” he pauses, and then tacks on, “it’ll probably jsut be another bust, though.”)

vivi had made a couple moves: swinging around his uncle’s shop early in the morning with coffee just for him, sitting close enough that their thighs brushed and smiling when he gave her a startled look, asking leading questions just to get him to say something, anything, to give her hope. nothing worked, though. it all went over his head-

-except for once, just once, when she caught the guilty grimace sliding across his face.

it was guilt for sure, and discomfort, and possibly regret. see, arthur remembered lewis, and he remembered lewis not only as his best friend, but as vivi’s _boyfriend._ she couldn’t help but think that was stupid, the idea that arthur may have thought any feelings a betrayal.

vivi didn’t want someone who only existed in other peoples’ memories. arthur was her best friend, and maybe she wanted something else from him; but more than that, he was _here._ he was living flesh and blood, and whoever lewis was was nothing more than a ghost, living in other people’s memories.


	4. oc request [laurel/lewis]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the lovely [lauritanaomystery](https://lauritanaomystery.tumblr.com/) on tumblr requested that i write a sweet scene between lewis and their oc, laurel

very rarely was it quiet in the pepper household. his parents had woken up early to prepare the diner for the day for as long as he’d been with them, and more often than not lewis had been the one to wrangle his sisters and get them ready for school. the pepper household was loud and busy and cramped, but it was steeped in joy, too, and happiness.

not to say that lewis disliked the quiet, or vice versa; it just made him savor every minute he could get on his own, just him and his thoughts.

that was what he was doing laurel shuffled into the kitchen at three in the morning, and flicked on the light.

he felt a bit guilty for startling her, but the way that she yelped in surprise when she spotted him and clapped her hands quickly over her mouth, wide-eyed, made his mouth twitch into a smile nonetheless. she looked- comfortable was the only word he could think of, softened from sleep- with her dark hair pulled up into a messy bun rather than her customary braid and pillow creases pressed into her cheek.

(the shirt she wore seemed several sizes too big, too familiar, and lewis thinks, _oh, so that’s where that went._ )

“lewis,” she hisses, seeming more embarrassed than irritated, “what are you doing?”

“couldn’t sleep,” he says, guileless to cover his amusement. he nods at the chair on the side of the table in invitation. sympathetically, “you wanna talk about it?”

laurel ducks her head and hunches her shoulders, turning away from him to grab a glass from the cupboard she doesn’t look at him when she turns back and runs the tap. “i’ve been having weird dreams.”

lewis waits for her to continue, but no answer is forthcoming even as she slides into the seat across from him. “oh, please tell me that’s not coffee.”

“just chamomile.” he tilts his mug just enough for her to see the contents without spilling it. he didn’t even like tea much, but it was nice to hold something warm in his hands, the smell of the steeping herbs soothing any frayed nerves from dreams of his own. 

“good,” laurel says, gives a jaw-splitting yawn, and then goes quiet again. it wasn’t uncomfortable, that quiet; instead it was familiar. they didn’t need to fill the silence, the two of them; it settled over them like a blanket, old and worn and comfortable. _safe._

lewis leans back in his chair with a sigh and pulls his mug close. the tea _must_ have been lukewarm by now, but he _swore_ it still warmed his palms, heat radiating in a steady, lowly thrumming pulse. it was one of the things he appreciated- _loved-_ about laurel: the way she was able to read him so well, able to tell when he needed quiet or comfort.

she shifts, just slightly, her ankle brushing accidentally against his beneath the table, but when lewis looks up laurel is watching him, a fond smile pulling at her lips. she bumps his foot with her own, just once.

lewis smiles back, and returns the nudge. 

very rarely was it quiet in the pepper household, but when it was the silence was to be treasured, the gaps between words belying a gentle, easy sort of love.


End file.
